Our little pilgrim

Charlie spent a lot of time at school in November while I was working on an online auction.  While he was there, he made his first craft – a cute little Thanksgiving-inspired headband.

Apparently, he liked making the crafts, but he was not thrilled about being away from Mama.  The separation anxiety is a new experience for me – Ellie never so much as blinked when she went to childcare at church or when she started school.  Luckily, he forgot all about me within minutes of seeing a room full of new toys and friends!

Gaga and Papa’s Visit

Gaga and Papa visited us in November before they headed down to Cozumel for the winter…and yes, I’m just not getting around to posting pictures.  We had so much fun with them though – the kids were just in heaven.  Damian brought in the inflatable slide and the kids (and Gaga) threw themselves down it over and over (and over!) again.

As always, we did a terrible job of taking pictures…and of brushing Ellie’s hair, apparently.

So I didn’t capture one with four sets of eyes looking at the camera, but this one was close:

Especially when this is what we were up against:

Not sure who upset the princess, but her face cracked me up:

King of the mountain:

Ellie's Christmas program

Ellie was in a Christmas program at her school today and yesterday. She was supposed to say a bible verse ("You will be with child and name him Jesus") with Cain and another little girl, but she was a bit overwhelmed by the microphone and the crowd. For some reason, the video is really grainy, but you can sort of see her shake her head when asked whether she was going to say the verse:

Then her class sang "Jesus Loves Me." Ellie has been singing it for months...everyday...several times a day. But today, she didn't utter a word of it. Instead, she flirted with the school director (over her right shoulder) and messed with her dress. Oh well -- she looked cute standing up there!

We didn't have the Flip yesterday so we don't have footage of it, but during the finale (all of the kids took the stage and sang a song together), Jackson and Cain had a very audible debate about whose mommy was in the audience. Jackson said "that's my mommy!" and apparently Cain thought he was talking/pointing to his mommy, so he said "no, that's my mommy!" They went back and forth (louder than all of the other kiddos combined) the entire song -- it was hee-larious!

We just love this school and it's so sweet to see something that the kids and teachers have worked so hard on!

My little turkeys

I forgot to post pictures of the kiddos in the little turkey shirts I made for them.  I was so sad when Thanksgiving came and went and I had to pack away the shirts.  Damian pointed out that I can cut out the turkeys and sew them on bigger shirts each year – he’s so smart!

The Little Man at 15 Months

We had Charlie’s 15 month appointment last week and other than two infected ears, he’s in tip-top condition.  As we all know, he’s big – he’s 34 inches tall (way off the charts – above the 98th percentile; Ellie was 32.5 inches), he weighs almost 28 pounds (a mere 85th percentile; Ellie weighed almost 27 lbs), and his noggin has finally dropped onto the charts at the 95th percentile (Ellie’s was also in the 95th percentile).  This was actually the first appointment that Dr. Chad didn’t re-measure his head, convinced that the nurse made a mistake.

We did subject the little man to one vaccine this time and he didn’t even flinch!  I was cowering in the corner, pretending to look for something in the diaper bag, while Daddy held Charlie down.  And it turns out that I was the biggest baby in the room…by far -- Charlie was all smiles, even while being jabbed with a needle!

The appointment was a bit of an eye-opener for me because one of the developmental milestone questions was “can Charlie point to different body parts?”  And I realized that I have never (not once!) told Charlie where his nose, eyes, ears, etc. are.  Poor second child!  He just seems like such a baby – I can’t believe that he’s old enough to be pointing to his nose.  But then I look back at what Ellie was doing at the same age and the difference is unbelievable.  After all, by 15 months she said nearly 60 words (http://ellieandcharlie.blogspot.com/2009/05/words-words-and-more-words.html) and started speaking in 2-word sentences (http://ellieandcharlie.blogspot.com/2009/05/this-week-in-words-part-ii.html).  Charlie, on the other hand, doesn’t really have any words other than “Gacie”  (it’s finally become a “g” sound, but still missing the “r”).  He can say “go, go, go,” and “wastha?” (what’s that?), but not reliably.  Just recently, however, he started picking up signs.  Predictably, his favorite sign is “eat;” but he also knows the signs for “more,” “again,” “all done,” and “sleep.”  I need to study up on other signs and be better about using the signs for “please” and “thank you” because he loves being able to communicate – he just gets the biggest grin on his face when he signs!  Perhaps he’ll learn to sign “hey, Mom, how about teaching me where my nose is?!”

Baby's New Shoes

A few weeks ago, when Charlie was able to walk, but not willing to walk, I thought it would be a great idea to get him some squeaky shoes -- I figured that the squeak would motivate him to walk, rather than crawl. Well now he's a fulltime walker and his squeaky shoes just arrived. We may be disabling the squeakers faster than I anticipated...but it was pretty cute for the first few minutes!

Christmas cards

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Well, actually, it’s not (Damian went to work in shorts and a t-shirt and I think it hit 80 degrees yesterday!), but we’re getting into the Christmas sprit anyway. We’re even being super daring and we’re putting up a Christmas tree on Thursday – we’ll see which kiddo strips it of ornaments and/or knocks it over first! There are lots of things that I’m looking forward to (seeing our UK family, taking the kids to look at Christmas lights, listening to Christmas music on the radio, etc.), but one of my favorite things about this time of year is finding little treasures in our mailbox every day…not gifts (although we love those too, of course), but Christmas cards! I love them! I love seeing pictures of family members and friends whom we haven’t seen in ages. I love posting them throughout the house and pulling out Christmas cards from years past. Just love it!

This year, I found out about a fantastic deal (thanks mydfwmommy.com and Hillary!) – Shutterfly is giving bloggers 50 free Christmas cards! You just have to sign up at http://bit.ly/sfly2010. The hardest part is deciding which card to order – there are so many fantastic designs to choose from! Luckily, you can narrow down the options by size, color, designer, etc. You can also save your card and come back to it later – handy when your hubby won’t sit still long enough to look through all of the options! Now I can just show him the 10 (yes, 10!) cards that I’ve designed and hopefully between the two of us, we’ll decide on one. I love being able to show more than one picture: http://www.shutterfly.com/ssc/viewPreview.sfly?fid=e3a62285696cf858328a6b68bbcad23c5625c431369d420afd12f45bbad520eada27fa73774b895d587981ff14e26afc. But then again, I love the simplicity of having just one photo: http://www.shutterfly.com/ssc/viewPreview.sfly?fid=4ae2a182b683c578328a6b68bbcad23c5625c431369d420afd12f45bbad520eada27fa73774b895d7386f5d652e9b5f7 Even if we can decide on how many pictures to use, we still have over 100 fabulous designs to choose from: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery. At this rate, maybe we should start looking at Valentine’s Day cards instead!